Companies are all buzzing about DRM and how it 'protects' their intellectual property, programs, etc. Sometimes, DRM is warranted - take for example, a program like Photoshop - perhaps the most widely used and powerful photo editing program in the world. It's a ripe target for piracy. Other times, DRM is absolutely pointless given what the program does. Take these two examples:
* A program that is used to program and control a specific brand of sewing machine (complete with its own touch screen LCD panel and stylus), to add patterns, styles, etc. The program not only requires a 15k computerized sewing machine, but a rather expensive software package complete with hardware USB dongle to 'authorize' the software to actually install/run. If you lose the dongle, its 1k to replace. One has to ask, how many people in the world would actually have one of these computerized sewing machines, let alone the need for the software package? Unless I missed something and there's a 0day granny hacking group out there pirating this, why oh why would anyone even have the desire to try the program? Are the hackers making doilies on Friday nights now to impress one another?
* A $125 add-on for AutoCAD that embeds spredsheet cells in drawings that requires a licensing server for as little as 2 copies. Not only is the licensing server very unstable and crashes often, but it can't run on a headless machine through RDP. "No problem!" says the company, "run it on one of the workstations!" Ahhh, no. They seemed shocked that we actually had servers with no monitor on them - they've obviously never seen how real companies setup a server room. Meanwhile, no licensing server, no add-on goodness. Half a dozen support incidents later involving replacing the licensing server with a 'custom made' one just for us that supposedly fixed the RDP problems, they opted to give us individual copies that don't require a licensing server. Boom, problem solved, no more whiny CAD people.
In the first example, the obsecurity of the program makes it absolutely useless to anyone who didn't buy the expensive sewing machine, let alone what any self respecing software pirate might downoad (not to mention the bullshit 1k cost to replace the USB dongle). In the second program, not only is the program very specalized and not likely to be used by anyone other then people doing building design, but its not that expensive to begin with and is absolutely useless without AutoCAD.
How many copies of their software do these companies sell each year? I can't imagine they would come anywhere close to Windows 7, Photoshop, or even the current popular computer games. Are they really losing any sales at all to pirates? Seriously.
